Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday May 02, 2014 @01:37PM
from the glued-to-the-ceiling dept.

An anonymous reader writes "One of the most interesting notes from Apple's recent quarterly report was that iPad sales are down. Pundits were quick to jump on that as evidence that the iPad was just a fad, but there were still more than 16 million units sold. iPads, and the tablet market as a whole, clearly aren't a fad, but it's also unclear where they're going. They're not convincingly replacing PCs on one end or phones on the other. Meanwhile, PCs and phones are both morphing into things that are more like tablets. New form factors often succeed (or fail) based on what they can do better than old form factors, and the iPad hasn't done enough to make itself distinct, yet. Ben Thompson had an insightful take on people demanding desktop functionality from the iPad: 'This sounds suspiciously like the recommendation that the only thing holding the Macintosh back was its inability to run Apple II programs. It's also of a piece with the vast majority of geek commentary on the iPad: multiple windows, access to the file system, so on and so forth. I also think it's misplaced. The future of the iPad is not to be a better Mac. That may happen by accident, just as the Mac eventually superseded the Apple II, but to pursue that explicitly would be to sacrifice what the iPad might become, and, more importantly, what it already is.'"

Perhaps sales are slowing down because of market saturation. The iPad was the first of its kind (that people actually bought, used, and liked). Almost everyone who wants one has probably bought one and the slowing rate reflects market saturation. A diminishing pool of new buyers and a steady pool of people replacing older models would help to explain the "dwindling" sales.

That's the computer market as a whole. From the early 80's up until about 2005 computers were always slow. Slow to the point where people got frustrated, and the never ending progression of speed made upgrading every 2 years (or even faster) the norm.

Then sometime around 2005-ish things seem to get to a point where people weren't waiting on the computer anymore. An upgrade meant little because outside of gaming the computer likely wouldn't "feel" any faster.

Heck I used to build a new computer annually, but I just rebuilt my computer about 2 weeks ago that I had been running since 2009. Not because it was too slow, but because half the USB ports had died on the motherboard.

At this point its gotten to be about like a car. I don't buy a new computer because I want something "better" anymore. I buy when the old one is broken or has more problems than are worth fixing. Tablets are the same way. Honestly I think phones would be too except that due to the way they're carried they suffer a lot more wear and tear and simply break more frequently.

Heck I used to build a new computer annually, but I just rebuilt my computer about 2 weeks ago that I had been running since 2009. Not because it was too slow, but because half the USB ports had died on the motherboard.

There is, it's why you have to pay a $150 service charge to replace the battery. The planned obsolescence is the lifespan of the battery. Which should be around 2 - 3 years.

There is a market for that service and it usually costs less than Apple charges. Considering that the product is out of warranty by the time the battery goes flat, having it serviced by a 3rd party or DIYing it usually isn't a problem.

I wonder whether part of the problem is that after having one of these devices, people aren't so keen to replace them. Our third gen iPad is about two years old, and already we have problems with app upgrades breaking things, and of course Apple themselves pushing us to upgrade to a new version of iOS that gets terrible reviews. Plus the general closed ecosystem isn't an obvious downer for most people when you buy the first time, but after finding all the little frustrating things it can't do, I can see that at least some significant proportion of users might be put off.

Tablets as a format seem to be useful for a certain niche: basically, they're good for receiving information and some basic interaction, but not serious interaction/content creation. But there are more tablets than just Apple's, and Android tablets seem to be increasing their market share at Apple's expense. So it might be a market saturation issue with the tablet format, but I suspect there's more to it than just that in the specific case of iPads.

Urm. You are implying that this isn't a problem on Android devices? Sorry to break the news to you, but App incompatibilities on iOS get fixed. I've seen Apps on my ipad-2 break every once in awhile, but they don't stay broken for long.

App incompatibilities on Android, particularly when it relates to a driver bug that requires a vendor fix or app-developer work around, often do not EVER get fixed. It's one reason why apps tend to get developed for iOS first, because developing an Android app that works across umpteen different devices each with its own hardware bugs is a nightmare.

After the bump in resolution, I just don't think there's much reason to upgrade. Speed is okay. The tech industry increasingly has to look at a future where it sells products that will be "good enough" for most people for a decade instead of 2 years.

What smart phones/tablets went through the last 7 years is what desktop and notebook PCs went through in the 80s/90s/early00s. Now very few people consider seriously getting a new desktop every 2 or even 4 years. And yes there will always be a segment that wants more speed, but as they grew the market for computers, that segment did not increase in proportion with it because most of those power users were already there by the nature of their work. Many of the power users that get added afterwards probably replace the ones that drop off for one reason or another.

And considering ewaste, this is not a bad thing. Except for companies whose stock price depends on them always pushing out more product than they did the same quarter last year.

You're not going to get a decade out of a tablet battery. A replacement cycle of about 3 years seems to make the most sense for handheld devices without user-serviceable batteries. The improvements made over 3 years, and the price-drops will make getting a new one more reasonable than paying to service an older less-functional device. A PC can still be in use in 10 years because you can easily replace the motherboard battery.

This is somewhat endemic of PCs at this point. We are not in the dark ages anymore... unless you're playing the latest and greatest FPS, even a 5 year old PC works just fine... At this point your OS is likely to wear out before your hardware!

I think the same can be said with tablets. My iPad 2 works just great. I have NO incentive to buy an iPad X (where X > 2). Hardware has gotten so good at this point that every "old" (i.e. ipad2) is still great.

Even with the latest and greatest FPS, a 5-year-old PC works fine. I haven't had to upgrade a PC to play a game at max-settings since Crysis was released.
We'll need to move to new video cards and maybe PCs for 4k gaming, but as long as we're at 1080p the current hardware is fine.

While that may be true, I think it's also a case of not seeing the forest for the trees.

The reason tablets must eventually replace laptops (not desktops), is because they can. They are very near to doing so now. Take a look at the recent Gizmag comparison of the new Macbook Air versus Microsoft's Surface Pro 2. They are both good-laptop-quality machines, even though the Surface Pro is more like a tablet. (In fact it basically is a tablet.)

The future of the iPad is not to be a better Mac. That may happen by accident, just as the Mac eventually superseded the Apple II, but to pursue that explicitly would be to sacrifice what the iPad might become, and, more importantly, what it already is.'"

What the iPad "already is" is an inferior computer. It's great for niche applications. When I hired a plumber he pulled out his iPad, used it to process my credit card payment, tapped a couple of buttons and emailed me a copied of the bill.

But it's not a general purpose computer. The small screen, no keyboard and no external ports make it useless for doing any real work. Except for niche applications, it's strictly a content consumption device.

I think it really depends. A lot of people who always used a laptop seem to be better served by keeping the laptop. I personally have always hated a laptop for general usage though. Compared to a desktop they've always been limited in specs and had smaller screens and bad keyboards.

HOWEVER, for those times when I'm out traveling I need something portable, and the tablets work great for that. I'm not out working, and any email I send is basically "Hey I'm out till Monday - I'll check with you when I'm bac

Whose licensing is controlled with an iron fist, compared to a lot of 1980s PCs that used standard (or at least unpatented) external interfaces.

it has a screen *larger* than many of the first PCs

True, the monitor in the old black-and-white "toaster" Macs (128K, 512K, 512Ke, Plus, SE, SE/30, Classic, Classic II) was smaller than the iPad's screen. But many of the PCs that preceded it had 240p video output compatible with standard-definition televisions. The Apple II and Commodore 64 sure did. And I think even by the early 1980s, televisions had surpassed tha

Whose licensing is controlled with an iron fist, compared to a lot of 1980s PCs that used standard (or at least unpatented) external interfaces.

Logically speaking, you are persisting a fallacy, specifically a straw man argument. That the interconnect is licensed and controlled is irrelevant to the fact that it exists and functions as an interconnect.

The original statement, here:

But it's not a general purpose computer. The small screen, no keyboard and no external ports make it useless for doing any real work. Except for niche applications, it's strictly a content consumption device.

The only valid arguments you are making are ideological, and those can be mitigated by purchasing one of the Android tablets instead.

I agree that an Android tablet beats a PC for the same use cases for which an iPad beats a traditional PC. But there are still use cases where a traditional PC beats both. An Android tablet comes closer than an iPad to being a full replacement for a laptop, but neither is quite there.

iPad sales aren't down at all - compare the combined q1 and q2 of last year and this year and they're basically even. The difference is for the 2013 fiscal year, Apple was unable to fulfill the holiday backlog in q1 so more sales fell in q2. This year that backlog didn't happen, so Apple had "record-breaking" sales in q1 and "omg-less-than-last-year!" sales in q2. This is a nonstory to anyone who puts the slightest thought into it.

>I don't see PCs filling in their space. I can see phones filling in their space.

Easily. I don't even know where my Nexus 7 is, because I stopped carrying it when I got a Galaxy Note 3 with a big 1080p screen.
If someone creates a phone with a roll-out screen, it'll all over for tablets.

There was once a terrible syndicated show called Earth Final Conflict. The writing was just bad, the acting was mediocre at best, but the technologies on the show were really nice. They had something called a "gl

Seconding this. Apple's first attempt was so good that by the time they added a high resolution display, a faster processor and 3G for those who need it, it was a mature product with no more features to add within three generations. If you have a third gen iPad you don't need to upgrade for as long as you can get replacement screens and batteries for it.

Sales are down because we already have one and don't need two. The things are not nearly as disposable as people seem to think.

I'd have bought an iPad Air or new Mini if it had TouchID. We already have two iPads, but putting the v1 out to pasture would have been worth it to no deal with password entry. Also iOS7 isn't nearly as appealing for an iPad as it was for the iPhone (control center is a must for phones).

I'd also buy a new iPad for touch ID but I can live without it. I was planning to get the smaller iPad model in 128Gb for extra storage. Now that there will apparently be a 5.5" iPhablet I'll probably just get one of those and buy the big iPad air once I fill the old one up with eBooks.

I think that he means that the iPad is underpowered compared to any Mac product made in the last 5 years.

Either that, or he's complaining that the iPad software is too overly simplified. The software selection on the iPad is OK, but what you can actually DO with the software still pales to what you can do with a real computer. I sure as hell wouldn't want to write a manual or edit a film on one.

Agreed. At no point was the Apple II more powerful than the Mac. It also looked pretty much like the Mac: keyboard, mouse, screen. Just because Apple branded their newest computer with a new name did not make it a new product category. Apple even shipped a GUI for the II series.

I [...] still believe what I wrote back in 2011 when I said that all the general-purpose devices we use for computing and communications–desktop computers, laptops, smartphones, tablets and maybe even a do-everything console like the Xbox One–are PCs. They just happen to come in a variety of form factors, with different capabilities.

To me, it's not a personal computer unless the person who owns it controls what computing is done on it. Nintendo has rejected games such as The Binding of Isaac, and Apple has rejected applications such as WiFi-Where. This makes these platforms not general-purpose. Thus there's no "do-everything console" unless you count set-top Android devices such as OUYA or set-top PCs such as the forthcoming Steam Machines.

Thus there's no "do-everything console" unless you count set-top Android devices such as OUYA or set-top PCs such as the forthcoming Steam Machines.

OUYA failed big time. In fact we've had consoles for nearly 40 years, and no open console has ever succeeded. So maybe, just maybe, that's not what people want. There's no big demand for an open console.

And lest anyone says that open phones have been successful. (Leaving aside the dubious claim to Android openness.) Android phones have been successful by being the cheap option. Not by being the open option. The mass market isn't like the niche that populates Slashdot. They neither know nor care about this concept of "openness" in software.

To me, it's not a personal computer unless the person who owns it controls what computing is done on it. This makes these platforms not general-purpose.

Fine, if you're going to be THAT literal, they are "special purpose personal computers. They don't HAVE to be general purpose.

Nintendo has rejected games such as The Binding of Isaac,

BoA's developers were stupid to even try to port to the 3DS. Nintendo, far more than Sony or Microsoft tries to portray itself as "the choice for families who want their games to be 'safe' ". Nintendo's portables skew a bit younger than average. BoA's religious content would be considered too risky to publish by Nintendo. BoA's developers would have been better off going for th

Not if a particular computing is among the classes of computing that the App Store Review Guidelines forbid. Then you have to buy a second computer (a Mac) and pay a recurring iOS Developer Program fee to take control of your device. By then, you own the hardware but lease the privilege to use it.

By your definition, a modern, high-spec Windows box isn't a 'personal computer' because I can't choose to run AS400 software on it.

You can choose to recompile your AS400 software for it, or you can run an emulator. Apple, on the other hand, forbids emulators that allow users to add their own software.

(Someone other than me made a decision which prevents me from doing so.)

AFAIK that Commodore emulator got banned from the appstore because it could load arbitrary code from the internet. That means you should have been alowed to hand write your own basic code on it. (But I never tried that one).

Regarding your first question, Apples rules are openly published in the Apple forum. There is no developer account required for it.

I disagree. There has never been a time when you could not write software for your personal device (at least since Apple provided a compiler for IOS). You may still complain about file system accessibility, but you can write personal software for your IOS device.

You can't write personal software for your iOS device without paying a $100/year subscription. (Well, you can write it, but you can't run it) I'm sorry, I don't want to have to pay a subscription to write software for my own device.

The problem is this sort of "improvement" will help you but few other people. Sure a few other power users might start using it, but it's not something for the general public in the sense it's not worth the resources to create.

The tablet market gas gone through the early adopters and is maturing. It also appears to have a longer replacement cycle time than say cell phones, probably do to cost and newer models do not necessarily offer must have features, unlike phones which go from 2G-3G-4G LTE. Cost also figure into replacement time.

Right know, iPads and other tablets are good enough, even several generations old ones, for the uses that do better on a tablet than a cell phone but don't need a PC to be acceptable. For example, reading eBooks, browsing the web, light office suite use, etc. Despite speed increases and better screens, a Gen 1 iPad is still pretty good at that so there in no compelling reason to shell out $500 or more for a new one.

That said, tablets need to migrate beyond the "it's a mobile PC" mentality to becoming an information appliance that is used to get desired information in a variety of settings. In short, a mobile gateway to information that is now accessed in other ways and where a PC is to cumbersome and a phone too small.A good example is Synology's video viewer app. You can access videos from the NAS on an iPad (or phone) and use airplay to put it to a TV; bypassing a separate PC server for playback. If you leave the room you can continue to watch on the iPad or send it to another TV in the room you go to. In short, the iPad is the common connector for a better viewing experience; not a replacement viewer.

Phones are slowing as well, Short of me breaking it or the battery dying, I can easily see my HTC ONE M8 lasting 4 years. It's probably why HTC made sure the battery was not replaceable in the phone... to ensure it will stop working.

Any recommendations for a new(er) phone? My current one is a HTC Sensation 4G. I'd like to have something I can put an alternative ROM (maybe CyanogenMod) on, and I'd prefer a removable SD card, and require a replaceable battery. I actually replace the battery in mine (and my wife's; she has the same model) quite frequently when away from home too long. I have a set of replacement batteries and a standalone charger, and this has been extremely useful.

My iPhone 4 has already last me 4 years. The main limiting factor, honestly, is whether or not the device is getting current OS updates. Because my phone will be dropped from support this year, I've finally decided it's time for a new one.

If HTC can keep the M8 up-to-date for the next 4 years, I see no reason why it wouldn't be able to do the same.

HTC cant keep a 3 month old phone up to date. Luckily the community around android sprung up to support phones where these companies refuse to.

HTC has the absolute worst record on updates, it's because they allow the carriers to whore out the phones hard. When I got my HTC ONE M8 the first thing I did was unlock it and jailbrake it (S-OFF) so I could install a clean Google Play Rom and get rid of all the garbage that HTC slapped on top of android, and then AT&T slapped on top of that.

That's not what Tim Cook's predecessor thought. Steve Jobs always used to claim that iPhone and iPad are to the Mac as cars are to trucks [archive.org]. The iPad is not a truck [slashdot.org]. Case in point: I'd be surprised if tablets replaced Apple's own PCs for running Xcode.

Jobs and the collective was clearly of the opinion that "most people don't need trucks".

They don't. Most of the guys, and it is mostly guys who own trucks, use them as penis compensators driving to their cubicle jobs.

"Commercial" trucks owned by businesses are a different story.

Same goes for PC's. Most people are content consumers. While they might have a PC for some purposes, it doesn't have to be a high end "Ferrari" PC, it can be a sub-compact "Hyundai" PC, and they can do a lot of their computing on a tablet or phone.

The iPad sure couldn't replace a desktop, but the Surface Pro is getting pretty close. You can run 4 monitors [wpcentral.com] off the thing, and plug in a USB keyboard and mouse. You could also add a USB hard disk for extra storage. It could pretty much replace most people's desktop machines, an still act a very capable tablet when you want to bring it with you. It's a little on the pricey side right now, but if you don't need quite as much power, you can do similar stuff with Transformer T100, which has less power, an

Yes, but there's no point doing that. You might as well just get a normal desktop at that point. Or a laptop if you want the portability. Which is part of Microsoft's problem. The Surface Pro is competing against *everything* which means it can get beaten out by anything.

Yeah the iPad is going to win in the weight category, but only because it's so incapable of actually doing anything. 2 lbs is still lighter than most laptops/ultrabooks on the market. For $1000 you can get a Surface Pro that can replace a $600 desktop, $600 laptop, and $200 tablet, which is a net savings, plus you don't have to worry about how to sync between devices because you have 1 device that covers it all.

Um...do you realize that the Mac was the benefit of one of the largest and most expensive marketing efforts aimed at personal computer (lower case) consumers of all time (at the time)? And that the marketing hype culminated in a famous 1984 Superbowl commercial? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I)

Apple wasn't going to turn off the money maker that was the Apple II line right away. After all, the Mac could have failed. The Apple IIe was sold until 1993, the IIgs lasted until 1991. They had new products for the machines in the pipeline as late as 1993 such as an Ethernet card.

I'm not surprised. Face it, Ipads are EXPENSIVE toys for most people buying them. Yea, it runs IOS like a lot of phones, but at what price?

Amazon has been selling their Kindle devices for a LOT less, given what you get for for the money. I'm not a Kindle zealot (I hate that they are totally locked down) but Apple needs to face the fact that there are now other options out there that do just about everything that IPad can and they are cheaper. Add to that the large scale adoption of Android in both the h

The real joke here is that the inventory issue was explained in the conference call and anyone who bothered to read the actual source knows that ipad sales were actually down only 3% or so, and roughly flat across two months. The whole tablet space is flattening out but all that means is that Apple will start pulling more market share from Android just as it has been doing with the iphone... in the markets that matter that is. This is more junk like the 'world wide market share' crap that's proven to be s

How exactly is a Kindle Fire tablet "totally locked down"? The one I tried had the same checkbox to allow sideloading of APKs from unknown sources that the vast majority of OHA Android devices have. Or did this change in the HD and HDX models?

For years we've had snobbish hipster tech journalists gleefully informing us that we are now in the "Post-PC era", that our watt-hungry desktop dinosaurs are on the way out, that they are being replaced by a constellation of sexy, small gadgets like smartphones and tablets.

Except it isn't happening.

Every one of those goddamned articles was written on a laptop or desktop computer. You, fair reader, do your job or schoolwork

But when you come at them from the perspective of a smartphone user, they have some pretty nice attributes: much bigger screen, same or lower cost, easier typing, similar or better performance for the price, better battery life, etc.

Apple specifically addressed this during their conference call. Sales are not down; if you look at two quarters combined, sales are flat or slightly up. Sales only appear to be down year-over-year because they had supply issues five quarters ago, which pushed sales from that quarter (which was low) into the start of the next quarter (which was high).

We have a couple iPads in our house, and I find myself resentful of the price to upgrade, so we haven't. The competitors are nearly as good, and cost half as much. The price points for more memory in particular outrages me. Why is anyone shipping a premium tablet starting at 16 GB of non-upgradeable storage these days!? How can you justify another $100 just to get to 32 GB?! 64 GB should be the starting point for tablets in Apple's target premium price range.

Earlier on I could understand the premium price, as the competition was simply nowhere near the polish and functionality. But the extra bells and whistles Apple has added just are not keeping pace compared to the premium they are still charging.

I long ago realized I was not in their target demographic for phone and PC sales, and now I think my next tablet is not likely to be an Apple one. Somehow they feel they are exempt from following the steady march downwards of electronics prices.

Heck I'd even be interested in shelling out extra for an iMac, but every time I check they are still not upgradeable, and come with rather underwhelming processors/memory/GPU considering the extreme markup.

The thing is, Apple doesn't sell 'product'. They sell 'experience'. How well does it work? How well does it *stay* working, over the long term?

I used to have a iphone and I had the same complaints as you. Upgrading was too expensive. Not expandable. Not enough control over the device.

So my next device was a Samsung Galaxy S3. This phone has to be the single biggest piece of shit I have ever purchased. Unstable. Burned through battery, to the point where after having owned it for only 3 months, I was getting less than half a day charge out of the thing. Sure, I got the control and upgradability I wanted, but I was forced to sacrifice stability and reliability and security.

These devices are only cheaper when you don't feel that your personal time is worth any money.

I bought a couple of landfill android tablets just so I could have something to read documentation with. Basically, my entire use case was to be an e-reader. The quality of the tablets was so bad that I couldn't even do that well. A battery life of a few hours at most. While in standby.

So now I have an iPad. It's by far the best mobile device I've owned. No, I can't plug in SD cards and expand the storage. Yes, it was expensive. But let me ask you this... how much is it worth to you to know that you can pull out an iPad out of it's sleeve and be guaranteed that it's going to still have battery life. That the screen will turn out, without fail, when you hit the power button?

Apple products are not flawless. They have problems too. There is not a single thing produced by man that doesn't have problems now and then. My iPad has crashed now and then under mysterious circumstances (rarely happens now, after the latest update...) but when you compare that to the experiences I've had with the alternatives, I'll take another Apple product hands down, because I have a life to lead and I have no interest spending my time trying to figure out why something I paid good money for doesn't want to work.

Claiming that something has sold a lot doesn't say anything about whether or not it's a fad. Sudden, extreme popularity is a hallmark of fads. That's not to make a claim either way, but it certainly seems that the 'Post-PC era' is not quite as Tim Cook claimed it would be.

In its current form and functionality, there's not a heck of a lot more that can be done with it. Frankly, it's kind of a limited device. Tablet apps are nice, except that you need 40 of them to take the functional place of a web browser. Web browsing on a tablet is good, but the typing interface is so hokey and prone to mispellings that the best you can hope for is to use it for basic browsing. So, yeah, I think it has peaked and personally I don't think Apple is creative enough without Steve Jobs to t

Flipping through email. Browsing boredpanda.com. Reading documentation. Any task where the primary interaction is absorbing content, is excellent for tablets. Especially when you are doing so in a place other than your desk. I don't need a tablet when I'm at my desk. My tablet is utterly fantastic when I'm on the bus, the train, or when I'm in bed and I really really wanna show my spouse that new Hamsters Eating Burritos video.

Trying to shoehorn tablets into being a desktop replacement is just stupid. Sure, you can approach that level by buying a bluetooth keyboard and maybe a mouse if your tablet supports such things, but why would you do such a thing when using an honest to god computer is so much better for the task?

Turning them into a phone-replacement is a possibility, but only within a very limited range of use-cases.

Having a drop in sales was inevitable. Most people who really wanted one have now got one.

Trying to shoehorn tablets into being a desktop replacement is just stupid. Sure, you can approach that level by buying a bluetooth keyboard and maybe a mouse if your tablet supports such things, but why would you do such a thing when using an honest to god computer is so much better for the task?

I can think of three reasons, from most technical to most ideological:

At the end of 2012, manufacturers stopped making 10" laptops. Only in 2014 did an affordable 10" laptop return to the market in the form of the Transformer Book by ASUS.

Tim Cook is trying to delude the public into thinking that "tablets will quickly replace PCs", according to the AppleInsider article.

It's not about the "user experience". It's about how much control you can exert over the system. The form factor really doesn't matter. What can you do with it? What roadblocks are the OS/hardware vendor going to put in your way?

A tablet doesn't need a "full desktop experience" to run an SSH server or a proper copy of CUPS.

Some people want both the always-available "mobile" experience and the focused-activity PC experience. The input and output devices would obviously differ, but technically, it could be made switchable within one device.

Tablet as PC

A tablet with a plug-in or Bluetooth keyboard should be able to run PC software much as netbooks did. Right now, popular products implementing this are Microsoft's Surface Pro and ASUS's Transformer Book.

A plug-in or Bluetooth keyboard and an HDMI monitor should let phones run more PC-style apps, with multiple visible windows.

PCs that are as powerful as the most powerful phones are so damn cheap that - since you're probably syncing everything on your phone out to clout storage anyway - you may as well just have a cheap PC permanently bolted to whatever workstation you have your monitor and keyboard on. It doesn't cost very much more, its far more convenient, and it lets you optimize the experience and applications in each case without making compromises.

well it's not DOA for people who spend time away from a traditional computer. i have an ipad 2 and 4

my kids play games on itremote control for apple TV, roku, xbox and other devicesi stream live TV via the time warner cable app and netflix and HBO Go. I can watch Got in the kitchen away from my kids. i can sit with my wife while she watches american idol on the TV, i'll watch a game on the ipadi can read a book on itGoogle docs and Pages i can finally finish that novel i started writing. anywherei can order

it's not DOA for people who spend time away from a traditional computer.

The problem comes when people buy only an iPhone and/or iPad and then delude themselves into thinking they wouldn't benefit from also buying a traditional computer.

my kids play games on it

How are games for iPad controlled? I'm aware of two kinds of games that work well on a touch screen: single- or two- button games like Canabalt and point-and-click games like Plants vs. Zombies. What control method would work well for a game like Mega Man or Castlevania? I tried playing the demo of Pixeline and the Jungle Treasure on a tablet, an

my oldest kid is getting into flight sims and drive/parking gamesA LOT of flight sims on ipad along with drive parking games. the controls mostly suck but he likes them. the flight sims you can tilt the ipad to control the plane

depends on the games you like but there is more to gaming than FPS and console crap. if you want a running game then there is temple run. he also played jetpack joyride for endless scroller

If you're doing something that doesn't involve typing, a tablet is easier to use while standing up and holding the device. That's the biggest advantage of tablets: they don't need to be set on a desk or lap.

Always connected mobility and apps: smartphone.

For which the carrier will want you to subscribe to yet another voice and data plan. Otherwise, it's just a 4" tablet like the iPod touch.

This is why I got the Surface 2 (not pro). It has a real file system. I can mount network drives. I can go to the command prompt (or powershell). Sure it's locked down as far as what apps you can run, but you can compile things yourself using the free version of Visual Studio. Personally I think it's a lot less locked down than Android or iPad. And the hardware is quite expandable. It has USB3, so you can plug in all kinds of external peripherals. It's not as open as a Linux tablet would be, but I don't

I develop amateur radio hardware (shameless plug: http://www.mobilinkd.com/ [mobilinkd.com]) and iOS devices are so locked down that my products do not work with them. Apple will not permit SPP/RFCOMM Bluetooth connections. All of my customers that use iOS also have an Android device. Many of them will stick with Android devices once they experience the features they have over Apple.

iPads may be experiencing a market decline, but tablets in general are not. Both my wife and I spend a lot of time on our tablets these da

So what? The whole point of IOS it to make it ridiculously simple for untrained end-users. These people you speak of chose the wrong platform, and now want it to be something other than it is, so the failure is entirely theirs. If they want a phone/tablet that's like a desktop there are Windows 8, and Ubuntu phones available.

I saw one yesterday. I had a guy in his 60s come over to me in the pub. Working class, non-geek. He saw I was using the internet on my laptop and asked how he could get his iPad on the WiFi. So I told him the AP and how to create an free account. It didn't work, I think because he pressed the wrong button on the web sign-up page. And then he wondered if it was because his old iPad was already registered.

Maybe you don't see them where you are, but they're out there. Have you not flown on a plane lately? Lots of people use them to entertain their kids with dumb movies. I had the misfortune of sitting next to some kid not too long ago while he was watching some stupid kids' movie starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. What really sucked is that his mom was kinda hot, but for some reason she stuck her kid between us. I would have much preferred to sit next to her, and also not have his iPad and dumb movie di

Your reasoning is just plain incorrect. Obsolescence on Android is far worse than it is on iOS. With Android you might see one, maybe two OS upgrades before the vendor stops supporting the device. App support is even worse... every device has device-specific quirks which many app vendors on Android have NEVER bothered fix.

Developer support on iOS is far better, for far longer. Apple supports their devices far better, and for far longer.

I have an ipad 1, and an ipad 2 (and many other devices). The ipad 1 is too old, period. The cpu is too slow and it only has 256MB of ram. I still see regular developer app updates for my ipad 1 but it just can't run all the apps out there due to the tiny amount of ram it has. It can barely load some web pages. It isn't the OS's fault. The OS version has nothing whatsoever to do with it (other than developers keying off the OS version when making assumptions about RAM use). Even my second-generation ipod touch still runs Pandora, which is all it is really good for with its tiny amount of ram and slow cpu.

And frankly, Apple supported my ipad 1 for far longer than any Android vendor supported my Android devices from that era. My ipad 1 is still usable. My Android devices from that era are not. They are all dead or worthless.

My ipad 2 with 512MB of ram only has trouble with the more bloated games, and its plenty fast enough for me. It is still my go-to device when I travel. If I can only bring one thing (other than my phone), it's the ipad-2 and not the chromebook and not the nexus-7.

More importantly, Apple devices are under Apple's control, not other vendors. In particular not the phone vendors. I've had to remove most of the apps from both my android phone and my nexus 7 because so many of them access *all* my personal data and accounts these days. The telcos install all sorts of crap onto Android phones that I don't want and can't remove.

On Apple you don't have to worry about that. The App has no control over what resources it's allowed to access, the user does. My next phone is going to be an iphone-6 (my current phone is a Motorola Razr M which is great except I can't run any major apps on it any more due to security issues). And, no, running an android app that forces permissions off doesn't work either... that crashes the target app more often than not (when it works at all).

So if your complaint is that Apple is not supporting their customers, it falls flat on its face. Apple is doing a far better job than anyone else.